Art and the Pleasures of Knowing

A selection of images from artist Richard Wentworth, showing at Turner Contemporary's current exhibition 'Curiosity: Art and the Pleasures of Knowing' until 15 September.

 

Monumental Poetry

Monday Portrait: 'Chinese Girl', Vladimir Tretchikoff

Chinese Girl, 1950

To mark its March sale for $1.5m and Kit Grover's recent trip to China, this weeks monday portrait is Vladimir Tretchikoff's queen of kitsch.

Cube of Paint

This morning we came across the talented designer Klemens Schillinger, anomalous in his oeuvre is 'Cube of Paint; 70 x 70 x 70mm', above. 

It reminded us of classic Missoni: 

Monday Portrait: Marina Abramovic

Marina Abramovic, 'The Kitchen, Homage to Saint Therese' 2009 

Michael Craig-Martin, Violin 2012

New! To accompany his programme design for the Glyndebourne 2013 season, artist Michael Craig-Martin has designed this set of bone china plates:

Kit Grover have designed this picnic bag and wine cooler for the 2013 season:

All available here.

Arshile Gorky

Artist Arshile Gorky, (originally known as Vosdanig Manoug Adoian) best known for his Abstract Expressionist paintings was also a talented carpenter.

We produced these facsimiles of a rocking horse carved by Gorky to accompany the retrospective of his work at Tate Modern in 2010. Gorky learned his carpentry skills in his native Armenia (hence Adoian) and originally made the rocking horse for his daughters.

Storm Thorgerson

Best known for his Pink Floyd album covers, graphic designer Storm Thorgerson died recently. Here are some of his surreal creations for the band:

Monday Portrait: Christopher Anderson 'Son'

HAPPY EASTER!

 
An apt time to share these super cheery Easter rabbits we spotted in South Ken. Enjoy the long weekend!

Monday Portrait: The Maybe, Tilda Swinton

Last weekend Tilda Swinton recreated her performance piece 'The Maybe' at MoMA.

Last shown in 2005 at London's Serpentine Gallery, the performance will take place sporadically until September. 

Eugenio Recuenco

Photographer Eugenio Recuenco's update of Picasso's Cubist women.

Images c/o Eugenio Recuenco and Trendland

Howard Hodgkin

Recently we worked with Howard Hodgkin to design this limited edition basalt box:

Howard Hodgkin

Limited edition 2013

Black Basalt Box

Available exclusively from YOOX.COM

Hand-crafted in London by ceramicist Stuart Carey.

Monday Portrait: Girl with Beret, Lucian Freud

Painted at the beginning of the fifties - and the start of his career - the precision of Freud's 'Girl with Beret' is a world apart from the gestural style the artist later become famed for. 

ACE Awards

The War Horse products we created for the National Theatre have won Best Product Range at the Association for Cultural Enterprises Awards 2013.

Available online from the National Theatre. See other award-winners here.

Monday Portrait: Jozi by Rankin

A departure from the fashion photography for which he is known - Rankin's 2010 portrait of Jozi who the photographer met on a trip to South Africa.  

Monday Portrait: Kate Moss by Tim Walker

As Paris fashion week is getting underway... Kate Moss photographed by Tim Walker at the Paris Ritz.

Post-Operative

Lichtenstein: A Retrospective opened at the Tate Modern last week. A similar love of comic books inspired us to create some 'post-operative' graphics for New York's Met Opera -

MeTube: August sings Carmen 'Habanera'

We love this video from 'MeTube', showing Carmen in a fresh light. That is fresh in the old-fashioned sense of the word... Have a look, go on, we dare you.



We are currently developing our new range for Glyndebourne Opera so watch this space. Last year we created the 'Quercus Operatica' graphic - an Operatic family tree with Glyndebourne-founder John Christie at the base.

Black Maria

Gruppe and Richard Wentworth's collaboration is not quite as permanent as the Pergamon Altar, but still a good place for gods and fallen angels to congregate and celebrate their differences. 

Read more here.

Monday Portrait: Richard Artschwager

This week sculptor and painter Richard Artschwager who died this weekend. 

Table With Pink Tablecloth, 1964

Sculpture is for the touch, painting is for the eye. I wanted to make a sculpture for the eye and a painting for the touch. 

Richard Wentworth at the Lisson Gallery

A Room Full of Lovers, 2013 (detail) 

Richard Wentworth's latest exhibition is now on at the Lisson Gallery. Open until 9 March, we highly recommend a visit. See products we have made with the artist in the past here.

A Room Full of Lovers, 2013 (installation view)

What Kit had to say -

This latest work by Richard Wentworth is something between a drawing and a sculpture, very chicken and egg, I don't know which comes first. The chains flirt with the floor like a line does the edge of a page. These pictures don't do it justice - just go, settle in, and let it work its message.

A Room Full of Lovers, 2013 (installation view) 

The Square Holes, 2013 

Apologies for Magritte's appearance in the reflection of this photo, a set of four, but sort of a good accident: you can list all the individual elements in the photos but together they are rather unsettling - I have been thinking about them for two weeks.

Found in the office: Richard III

Rooting around the office yesterday we found this illustration Kit did in the late seventies for Washington's Folger Shakespeare Library. 

Monday Portrait: Blank Elizabeth

This is not strictly a portrait but a product we made for the National Portrait Gallery a few years ago. It is a wipe clean memo board so you can decide how the monarch is feeling.


Image taken from an original portrait of Elizabeth I in the National Portrait Gallery collection by an unknown Netherlandish artist c. 1525.

Monarch of the Glen

Kit: Last weekend I went to  a viewing of Wes Anderson's film, Moonrise Kingdom, which was full of period detail, pretty much in sync with my own childhood. In the scoutmaster's (Ed Norton) tent hangs a painting of a stag in the wilderness.
There was always a copy of the same painting in my grandfather's house. It has a hole which we decided was the gunshot that killed the stag so he could be put in a painting. My grandfather's came with him from Maine and was probably painted between 1860-1880. It is a terrible, but charming copy. I was curious to find the original that had spawned an apparent Victorian repro business and dropped the image into google image search. Up popped the Landseer original, whose fate appears to be to have been made for appropriation. It was wonderful to discover the Peter Blake take on it, then Peter Saville's version of Blake's version of Landseer's original.
I have my Monarch close to me in my London studio. As an epilogue, this morning I walked past one of my favourite buildings on Giltspur Street, just near St Barts. Over the door is a huge stag's head, very similar to the Landseer… I had never realised why that building gave me so much pleasure until now- a cross Atlantic palimpsest of the best kind.

Original: Monarch of the Glen 1851, Edwin Landseer

Giltspur Street stag